


Calm

by cadkitten



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Aftercare, Cock & Ball Torture, Coping Mechanisms, Dom/sub, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Riding Crops, emotional fragility
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 09:15:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14398974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadkitten/pseuds/cadkitten
Summary: It's a return on an investment Bruce never intended to make...





	Calm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mitzvahmelting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitzvahmelting/gifts).



> So I figured I'd dig through my requests and I'd fill some of them with what I deem as "no pressure". Meaning this: I always feel like when something's requests - be it a sequel or a specific little instance - and it's not on some prompt meme, that I have to be perfect. I feel like I have to write thousands of words and it all has to flow beautifully and be some of the top 10% of my work and at times it becomes so daunting I don't write it for months or years because I'm scared I'll fail. But right now, I've decided that I'll write a few of them with "no pressure". I'll write them as snippets of the world or as whatever comes out, something to give in return for the request even if it's not a fully fleshed beast of a story. I've never meant to leave you all hanging, I just got crippled by the pressure. Love y'all. Thanks for being my amazing readers/reviewers/kudo-ers/inspiration-givers.
> 
> For @mitzvahmelting - From the "I wish you would write a fic where" question on tumblr eons ago - Bottom!Bruce BruTim H/C with Aftercare

There's a calm in the room though it's lacking the usual regal air of the calms that Bruce controls. The ones in the dark of the night, the ones on Gotham's rooftops or somewhere in the depths of its alleyways. That version of calm comes with a _presence_ that this lacks. 

When Tim's in control it's something else entirely. There's calm but it's gentle, like a lover's caress or the softness of a brand new fleece blanket. He likes to imagine it's the same as the way he used to sense the breeze as a child, before his mind was corrupted, before he watched his parents die before his own eyes and some twisted sense of vengeance settled deep into his gut. 

He watches Tim's fingers ghost over the dresser, testing for non-existent dust, his fingertips rubbing together when they come away from the wood and Bruce knows it for what it is, a stalling tactic to raise his awareness of the situation. Tim wants to ratchet him up until he's gasping for breath, waiting on the first strike from the stinging leather of the crop Tim holds loosely in his other hand. 

He's absent from it, detached from the very item he holds as if it doesn't matter nearly as much as it does. But it matters to Bruce, matters in a way that catches his breath and makes him shiver with anticipation. It matters because it holds the cure to what ails him. The deep stinging pain of it once it's left his skin, the shock to his system as it connects against already tender flesh, the parts where they move on to more sensitive zones and he has to bite back his screams, focus on his training so he doesn't fall into the abyss. It matters because of all of that just as much as it matters because when Tim lets go of it the pain will end and then he'll be safe and surrounded for as long as he lets Tim in. 

There's uncertainty as to how he ever let Tim in to start with, when he began to realize that this could even develop between them. He tries to imagine the years that came before this, the years he spent _without_ and he questions how he managed. How he knew Tim was willing and able to do this and never once asked for it. 

He closes his eyes and remembers the first time. The questions in Tim's eyes, the plea in his own voice, the way he'd gasped out his desires, high into the stratosphere on a cocktail of painkillers no one else would have been conscious through. Just as he remembers Tim telling him to ask him again when he was sober, to mean it and he'd do it. But not then, not while Bruce was _compromised_ , as he so delicately put it.

Bruce had asked, begged, in fact, and Tim had been left standing over him, smirking after forcing him to his knees. Negotiation had begun and now... now he had this.

There's a touch to his cheek and Bruce turns into it, kisses Tim's palm and then takes his hand, kissing the single ring on his middle finger - their signal Tim wants something from him - and breathes against it with a reverence he's never felt for anything else in his life.

He lets go and opens his eyes, sits ramrod straight and waits. 

Tim circles him, predatory, closer and closer until he's standing behind Bruce, his hand around his neck and his legs pressed to Bruce's back. He holds though he doesn't press and they remain that way until Bruce can't take it anymore, until he barely whispers, "Please," and that's all it takes for Tim to step away from him, to become a figment of his imagination in the air behind him until he _isn't_ anymore, until he's as real and tangible as the sound of the crop smacking across his back. 

The first volley is always the most intense, the ones that leave Bruce gasping, hunched over and straining his silk pants with his erection. He thinks if it would only go on a little longer he could cum from that alone, but he also thinks that if he did, it would all be over too soon. Tim knows what he's doing, knows when to stop and certainly knows how to play this game.

They don't speak, they never do. There's no need for words here in the calm of this room. Only two words matter. _Please_ and _Vengeance_. He's never used the second one, never felt the need to. Tim's never pushed that far and he doubts he ever could.

The crop strikes again, down his left side, leaving a burning hot trail behind and Bruce sucks in breath like a man come to surface on the verge of death. The third round banks the same places as the second and he chokes back the cry that so desperately wants out.

The fourth finds purchase within the marks of the third and he bites his tongue to hold in the screams. He's shaking by the time Tim's finished and moved on, by the time he's face down and ass up, his silk pants pooling around his thighs. 

He's so hard he cannot think, cannot _see_. Vision is irrelevant, sound is only white noise punctuated by the slap of leather on his skin, scent is old carpet and inevitable dust, taste is the copper tang of flesh too abused by his own teeth.

His ass stings and his world is on fire. It's the only thing he can think about it and it's a blessed relief from the tangle of his usual thoughts. There is no blame, no rules, no hatred, no emotional pain. There is only the physical, the depth, the relief that is this nothingness of angry agony in his backside. 

The first strike is but a flick against his sac and today that's all it takes. His hips pitch forward, his body convulses, and when he shoots off, he yells, shouts wordless things at the walls around him as he jerks on the floor until he's empty, straining, feeling like he needs more but cannot possibly take another second of it... and Tim knows.

He knows because he wraps his arms around Bruce and the crop is gone, because he kneels with him and pets over the warm flesh he's abused and ghosts feather-light kisses over the parts that burn the most. 

There's a certain fragility that comes with the aftermath, that slides down around them in the wake of such things, and he understands that just as much as he understand why the pain takes his thoughts away. The pain builds the walls around him, allows him time to tuck himself back in and make himself whole again, but the house he's built around him is glass. A single strike, one wrong move, a carelessly tossed phrase and the whole thing could come falling down around him. _This_ turns glass to concrete, provides reinforcement where there was none. This part gives him the tools he needs to keep going another week, a month, or three, until he needs the whole routine again.

Tim's fingers travel the path of his crop, soothe and catalogue and then they glide over flesh he hasn't chosen to mark this time, easing knots, providing contact until Bruce isn't shaking anymore, until he's boneless in Tim's embrace, until his breathing's evened out and his eyelids feel heavy.

Tim guides him to bed like it's nothing, tucks him in like it means something else, and his lips linger on Bruce's forehead like a ghost of a memory he shouldn't be associating with this and yet... he is.

Tomorrow he'll find Tim gone, his room filled with the calm he himself provides, and tomorrow he'll have the strength to go on once again. When Tim calls, a breathless plea in his voice - a week, a month, a year from now - Bruce will go and he'll tend to Tim the way _he_ needs in return. It's give and it's take. It's a return on an investment Bruce never intended to make, and he doesn't regret it for a second.

He closes his eyes and he listens to Tim's breath and he sleeps.


End file.
